By reading the PC Games Hardware edition 02/2006, i found an interesting article about the Dual Core Procesors.
The nvidia driver, are optimized to use the dual core processors.
Yes, the grafic card driver can split his job on both CPU core, in order to perform faster.
I wonder if something like this can be done in the 3dfx drivers.
I go a little bit further with the following sugestion: Every job that a 3dfx card NOT support ( pixel sharder, T&L ) should be transfered directly to the CPU cores.


Br.
Radu.

3d-analyse does this job...

Ok, so nVIDIA's drivers are multithreaded meaning that they are capable, in theory, of spreading their load on two processor cores such as the Athlon 64 X2 or Pentium D to increase performances even in monothreaded games.  NOT ! (said the reviews!) And on my nVIDIA system, enabling dual core optimization from the nVidia drivers, I go from 80 fps down to 45 fps when multithreading is enabled. I just don't get it what nVidia's doing with it, because it's been enabled in their driver for months (if not years) now, and I don't see any sign of improvement !! In SLI mode there is a 2-3 % framerate enhancement so it's NOT significant. ::) I think this option is not needed as long as a driver exists to pass video data from a cpu to a videocard, and do it the most efficient way possible ! There's no need for multithreading, as the driver itself never uses much of the cpu's clock ! Let's suppose someone enables multi-threading on 3dfx drivers. Ok, but you'll get THE SAME performance of course or even worse IMHO. You can't expect this feature to magically transform a program/game that has linear events bringing the advantage to turn it into a multithreaded super performance program/game. And transforming a single-threaded game into a truly multithreaded one is not something you can patch in on 3dfx drivers as it requires a totally different programming technique. :)

3D-Analyze only emulate some feature that a video card dont have.
It's also optimized for dual core ?

IMHO the last version apperas before the first dual core CPU....
The ideal 3dfx driver could take the advantage of dual core optimization because of it's feature/hardware limitations.
Of course, enabling the dual core optimization would not do the impossible, but we need every performance increasing that we can get  ;)
I think that it's an important aspect, that should not be ignored.

@m14radu The dual-core processor requires both the operating system and applications running on the computer to support a technology called thread-level parallelism, or TLP. This the part of the OS or application that runs multiple threads simultaneously, where threads refer to the part of a program that can execute independently of other parts. So, even without a multithread-enabled application, you will still see benefits of dual-core processors if you are running an OS that supports TLP! The  multiple core processor will handle the multiple threads of the programs running simultaneously with an increase in performance and efficiency. AFAIK, that  3d-Analyze will always run on a single core, although the job may be handed from one core to another at regular intervals and you won't see ANY difference i running it with more than one core/CPU/whatever at a time! And it doesn't need/have Dual-Core optimization because just it's not needed. 3da is just a....let's call it "fix" for the drivers. 3da is not a large memory/cpu resident process. The game uses the cores, not 3da. This program is just a line-through between the driver and the game/application.  :)

only an idea

you can use the Unified-Shader from ATi HD series and nVidian 8 series to hack Passwords
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/97833



maybe we can use a new card for T&L and a voodoo for rendering

@exxe

Can you please explain what that does ? :)
I don't know german very well. I see it's a password recovery program. But what effect does that have on ATI's DX10 unfied shaders ? :)

the software is using the GPU Power to crack the passwords

The Idea is to use other resources from the sistem if one is weak .
When CPU is weak, use the GPU for example to crack passwords.
When GPU is weak  use CPU !
;)

http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.heise.de%2Fnewsticker%2Fmeldung%2F97833&langpair=de%7Cen&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

this programm use the shaders to hack Passwords
they tell the gpu draw a simple triangel or something and the rest of the workpower is use to hack the Password

its 25times faster than a cpu



but remeber
its only an idea

Oh, so I see. That's why it's reccomended for server systems. :) I visited the official page and read it in english. Cool stuff. ;D